And whenever George wanted anything from her, from the jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she had had when she was a pupil of Mr.Smee and was still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession of the object of his desire, which obtained, he took no further notice of his aunt.
For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old schoolmaster, who flattered him, and a toady, his senior, whom he could thrash.It was dear Mrs.Todd's delight to leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa Jemima, a darling child of eight years old.The little pair looked so well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the Square," we may be sure) "who knows what might happen? Don't they make a pretty little couple?" the fond mother thought.
The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was likewise subject to the little tyrant.He could not help respecting a lad who had such fine clothes and rode with a groom behind him.Georgy, on his side, was in the constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr.
Osborne.Osborne used to call the other the old pauper, the old coal-man, the old bankrupt, and by many other such names of brutal contumely.How was little George to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs.Sedley died.
There had been little love between her and the child.
He did not care to show much grief.He came down to visit his mother in a fine new suit of mourning, and was very angry that he could not go to a play upon which he had set his heart.
The illness of that old lady had been the occupation and perhaps the safeguard of Amelia.What do men know about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains which are meekly borne by many women.Ceaseless slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience, watchfulness, without even so much as the acknowledgement of a good word; all this, how many of them have to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces as if they felt nothing.Tender slaves that they are, they must needs be hypocrites and weak.
From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed, which she had never left, and from which Mrs.Osborne herself was never absent except when she ran to see George.The old lady grudged her even those rare visits;she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty and infirmities had broken down.Her illness or estrangement did not affect Amelia.They rather enabled her to support the other calamity under which she was suffering, and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the ceaseless calls of the invalid.Amelia bore her harshness quite gently; smoothed the uneasy pillow; was always ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as her pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and closed the eyes that had once looked so tenderly upon her.
Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the consolation and comfort of the bereaved old father, who was stunned by the blow which had befallen him, and stood utterly alone in the world.His wife, his honour, his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away from him.There was only Amelia to stand by and support with her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken old man.
We are not going to write the history: it would be too dreary and stupid.I can see Vanity Fair yawning over it d'avance.
One day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the study at the Rev.Mr.Veal's, and the domestic chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two gentlemen stepped out.The young Masters Bangles rushed to the window with a vague notion that their father might have arrived from Bombay.The great hulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against the panes and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.
"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr.Bluck said as a thundering knock came to the door.
Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain himself, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for laying his book down.
The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight coat to open the door, came into the study and said, "Two gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The professor had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that young gentleman, owing to a difference about the introduction of crackers in school-time; but his face resumed its habitual expression of bland courtesy as he said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs.
Veal."
Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two strangers, whom he looked at with his head up, in his usual haughty manner.One was fat, with mustachios, and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat, with a brown face and a grizzled head.
"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman with a start."Can you guess who we are, George?"The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he was moved, and his eyes brightened."I don't know the other," he said, "but I should think you must be Major Dobbin."Indeed it was our old friend.His voice trembled with pleasure as he greeted the boy, and taking both the other's hands in his own, drew the lad to him.
"Your mother has talked to you about me--has she?" he said.
"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and hundreds of times."
